Books on the Menu

A Vision of Eden

@brittarnhild

I have a very good friend in India. She is the age of my mother, and when I think of her, I think of her as mamma India. We have been penpals for almost 20 years, and I have met her three times......so far. First, many years ago, in Rome, where Carolyn, or my mamma India, spent a spring, visiting her daughter. Then, some years ago I gave myself a trip to India as a 50th birthday present, then again, a little over a year ago, I was able to go to see mamma India again.

On my first visit I stayed with Carolyn and her (now late) husband for three weeks. In between travels in the area, I spent quite a lot of time exploring Carolyn´s book shelves. We have much of the same taste when it comes to reading, and I found one treasure after another. Most of all in the genre female travel literature, which is my favorite literature genre. One of the first books I read from cover to cover during my three Indian week was A Vision of Eden. The Life and Work of Marianne North. Some time later I went to Kew Gardens in London, hoping to see the Martianne North Pavillion, but I had no luck, the pavillion was under renovation.

Three years ago, when we went to Tenerife for the first time, I had just reread the book about Marianne North, and of special interest to me was her travel to the volcano island in 1875. It was then that I learned about the Botanical Gardens on the north coast of Tenerife, and either through A Vision of Eden, or through one of my guidebooks, I can´t quite remember, I also learned that there was a kind of a botanical museum in La Orotava, a kind of nursery for the bigger Botanical Garden further down the hills on Puerto Cruz.

 

One day my husband and I drove up north. We found the 4000 years old Dragon Tree mentioned by Marianne North, in the end we found the Botanical Garden, but we had no luck finding the nursery park. Last week we were in Tenerife again, and spent a lovely morning in the Botanical Gardens. After lunch we drove up the hills to La Orotava, and I decided to look for the park.

This time we found it........

.....only to discover that we should have come before lunch!!!!!

 

Well, we will be back on Tenerife, and anyway, we walked around the park, looking through the fences the best we could.

Now I know where the park is. I know it is waiting for me. And I am rereading A Vision of Eden, dreaming of travels to come.

 

 

 

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Here and here are links to my visits to the Botanical Garden on Tenerife,
and here is a link to my day in Kew Gardens.

 

 

Names for the Sea

@brittarnhild

Some books are found by pure accidents. Pure, happy accident I must say. Like the travel book which is following me around these days, taking me back to my beloved Iceland.

The book is "Names for the Sea. Strangers in Iceland" written by British Sarah Moss.

Sarah Moss is, according to her own homepage, a novelist, a travel writer and an academic, now living in West Cornwall, teaching in the University of Warwick´s Writing Program.

Some years ago, when she found herself with a husband without a job and two small children, she applied for a job in Iceland, the University in Reykjavik, she got the job and the family of four moved there.

Here is what Sarah Moss writes about Names for the Sea on her homepage:

Just after Cold Earth came out, in the summer of 2009, I moved to Iceland for a year with my husband and two sons. People always ask why we went and the truth is that I still don’t really know: because it was there, because we could, because we thought it would be interesting (it was), because I’d fallen in love with the place when I was nineteen, because we didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives in Kent.

We lived in a newly-built flat in a largely empty development in Gardabaer, a wealthy suburb of Reykjavik which we chose to be close to the International School and the sea. I had a lectureship at the University of Iceland, where I taught Romantic poetry and creative writing. I found the experience of being a foreigner very hard. I didn’t know how to catch a bus or pay a bill, where to buy light-bulbs or calpol. The early days of living abroad are infantilizing, and made harder by a certain kind of Britishness that would rather kill itself (without making a fuss) than make a stupid mistake in public. I talked, one day, to some of my students about this paralyzing sense of idiocy and they, who had almost all lived abroad themselves at some point, told me that the Icelandic word for stupid is ‘heimsku’, one who stays at home. You stop being stupid by embracing your stupidity.

So that’s what Names for the Sea is about, living in a new place and asking questions. It’s partly about the landscape and seasons; the way we noticed the migratory birds whose passages tell you the seasons almost as reliably as the changing light, winter walks haunted by the aurora borealis, the hours of sunset and sunrise that make summer nights. It’s also about living with the volcano, and the financial crisis, but mostly it’s about the conversations I had with Icelanders when I started to seek answers to my foolish foreign questions. How do you live with a landscape that might come and get you in the night, with boiling geysirs and earthquakes as well as Arctic blizzards and active volcanoes? How do you reconcile the obsession with national independence and separatism with openness? How can you define national identity by physical and emotional toughness while explaining that it’s ‘unIcelandic’ to walk anywhere? Last but not least, who really believes in the Hidden People?

So far I have only read 85 of the book´s 350 pages.
I had planned to leave it at home when I fly south to Tenerife tomorrow, but now I know it will have to travel with me. 

Moss´writing is too good,
Iceland has such a strong place in my heart,
the book will come along,

and as always another travel to Iceland will be forming in my mind.

 

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You can get the book yourself from here:

 

and here is a link to Sarah Moss´page

 

A Year in the World

@brittarnhild

In between travels I feed myself on travel litterature. Female travelling authors are my favorite. I can´t quite remember, but I think it started in Provence nine years ago when we, by chance, came across Alexandra David-Neels house and I started to read about her and found the book where she wrote about her journey to Lhasa, the forbidden city in Tibet.

No, no, it started before that. It started in New York in October 2002. I spent two weeks there on my own, as an oberver at the UN General Assembly. The hotel where I stayed had no breakfast, so every morning I walked over to Borders in 5th Street and ate my books breakfast there. There I discovered the Traveler´s Tales series, and filled my suitcase with them.

No, no, no, it started even before that. It started with Frances Mayes´book, first about her books about buying  and restoring a house in Tuscany, then in 2006 her A Year in the World came.

I have read the book to pieces.
And it has sent me further along to other books and writers:
French Colette
Spanish Lorca
Pessoa and The Book of Disquiet
to mention a few.

Frances Mayes is again and again taking me around the world. Through her books, through her blog, and now we are also frinds on facebook and I follow her on instagram . She has opened the world of Luca Signorelli to me, and sent me art hunting for his paintings in Venice, Florence and London, she has made me start to write the tale of our countryside cabin in Western Norway, but most of all, she again and again sing me travel lullaby´s sending me around the world on a magic carpet.

Frances and her husband Edward, owns a house in Tuscany, Bramasole. On top of my list of a million things to do before I die is:
go to Bramasole to spend a night with Frances & Ed, and Terje, two bottles of wine, food from Fran´s kitchen and cookbook, and sharing travel tales.

 

Paradice!

Photos from a week I spent in Tuscany some years ago

 

 

 

 

 

Biographies

@brittarnhild

Do you read biographies?
I must confess that I love them. They are often among my favorite books. Especially if they are about women, traveling women, who challenge themselves and the world.

Before visiting Nepal in April this year I had read a remarkable book, in Norwegian, about the late midwife Ingeborg Skjervheim who left Norway and traveled all the way to the other side of the world, to Nepal and a tiny mountain town there. Because God had called her.

The book made a deep impression on me, and when I knew that I was going to Nepal, my dream was to go to Tansen, where sister Ingeborg had lived and worked for so many years. To do that I had to leave the group I was traveling with, and go on my own. But I was in no doubt. This was something I had to do.

I made it to Tansen. I made it to the hospital where Ingeborg worked, and best of all, I met the man who turned out to be the first baby Ingeborg delivered when she came to the town in 1955, and he showed me around for hours, in what he called "walking in the footsteps of Ingeborg"

Then this "first born" took me to his home where his wife had prepared a feast dinner for us.

 

 

After Tansen I continued to Pokhara. There I met the authors of the book about Ingeborg, the Swedish/Norwegian missinary Mirjam Bergh, and I was invited to stay in her home.

 

After I came back home I had to reread the book, and then I discovered that while working on it, Mirjam had, among several other books, also read Can it be me? by Marjory Foyle, a British doctor and psychiatrist who has spent over 30 years as a medical missionary in India and Nepal.

According to Mirjam, Marjory Foyle worked together with Ingeborg.

I have Marjory Foyle´s book on my desk now, found it through amazon, and I am so much looking forward to read it.

Will start it tonight :-)

 

 

 

You can read more about my days in Nepal here

 

The Lure of the Honey Bird

@brittarnhild

As part of my preparation for travelling to Ethiopia was to visit amazon to buy a map of the country. Amazon are professional sellers, and while you are there buying one thing, you get hundreds of other suggestions. I both love and hate than.....well, most of the time I love it, but it always is hard for my creditcard.

As soon as I had bought the map, I was of course  taken to new sites, and that is how I found Elizabeth Laird's The Lure of the Honey Bird, The Story Tellers of Ethiopia.

 

Elizabeth Laird knows the old Ethiopia from when she was a teacher here in the 1960ies. Now she has come back, travelling in all the twelve different regions collecting tales from the rich storytelling traditions, making small books of folk tales for school children.  The Lure of the Honey Bird is written like a traveller's tale, from when she travelled around in the country collecting the stories. She also shares many of the tales in the book.

Laird's travel tales charms me deeply, and so do her collected stories. Some so different from the tradition I am familiar to, others so much alike. We live in a small world. We live in an amazing world.

I have the book on my bedside table, and reed deep into the night with the help of a led headlight.
A perfect combination. During the days I do my own Ethiopian travels, collecting tales for my blogs, during the days I continue to travel, by books :-)

 

 

 

Only four days left

@brittarnhild

We just came home from a weekend up in the mountains. My weekend bag is unpacked and I have started to pack a hand luggage suitcase for two days in Oslo, a couple of work meetings. The big suitcase is still down in the basement though, waiting to be packed for an upcoming travel to Ethiopia, leaving on Thursday, back home ten days later. But even though the suitcase is still hidden in a cupboard, my packing, or rather preparations for packing has already started. And it starts like a travel abroad always start - with a pile of books and maps.

A bookpackage from amazon came in the mail the other day. Two books and a map. I will start one of the books tonight; In Ethiopia with a Mule by Dervla Murphy.

For many years Dervla Murphy has been one of my favorite female travel writers, or let me put it correct, The Favorite Female Travel Writer. Three years ago I had already booked a ticket to London with my husband and two daughters when I discovered Dervla was going to give a speech at a Traveler´s Tale Festival at Royal Geographical Society. I managed to get a ticket and spent a morning in Traveler´s Heaven. Inside Royal Geographic Society! Listening to Dervla Murphy talking about her life! Buying signed copies of Dervla´s books.

 

I have collected Dervla Murphy´s books for many years, still I don´t have them all. And In Ethiopia with a Mule was among those I did not have. Not until a few days ago that is :-)

I have flipped through the book already, it was the first thing I did when it arrived, and I was pleased when I discovered the map where Dervla traveled. The book is from 1968, and the map of Africa has changes since then. Dervla started her travels in Masawa,  a Red Sea city of Eritrea, continuing to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, before it went on over the border to Ethiopia. I have been to Eritrea twice, both times visiting both Masawa and Asmara. Now I will have the pleasure of reading about Dervla´s impressions and adventures there before we, Dervla and I, continue to Ethiopia together.

It was in Massawa in 2001 I had one of my "I will always, for the rest of my life, remember this" moments. We were a small international group with people from Eritrea, India, Denmark and Norway. After a long, hot day, visiting projects supported by Norwegian Church Aid, we were in Masawa, having dinner at a fish restaurant. It was still hot, Masawa is one of the hottest places on eart, we were sitting outdoors, on siple white plastic chairs, a plastic table between us. The oven where the fish was frisd was also outdoors, close to where we sat. A kind of well built down in the earth, a fire going on deep down, the walls of the well hot enough to fry the fish. While we were waiting for our meal to get read, our fish to fry, one of the men, a Norwegian, in our group, told us the history of the area, Queen of Sheba, the Aksum empire, the cradle of coffee. Under the stars in Masawa I felt like part of something huge, something important.

One day I HAVE to write my travel book,
but right now I have some great reading ahead :-)

 

 

 

 

Not only Thor Heyerdahl

@brittarnhild

We watched Kon-Tiki the other night. What a man! What a story! What a video!
Inspired by Thor Heyerdahl´s adventure I have tonight picked out of my shelves a book I bought last summer, Osa and Martin, For the Love of Adventure by Kelly Enright.

I first heard of Osa Johnson last summer when we were visiting our good friends Jane and Lanny in California.  Jane had put a stack of books for me to read in the bedroom of the guesthouse where we stayed. Among a great many fantastic books, the one which first caught my attention was I married Adventure by Osa Johnson. Osa Johnson was the wife of Martin Johnson, an adventurer who took part in a few of Jack London´s adventures. After Osa and Martin married they continued to create their own adventures. I married Adventure is Osa´s autobiography.

I spent long nights and early mornings reading I Married Adventure, and when we later found Kelly Enright´s book about Osa and Martin when we visited Jack London State Park, I knew I had to buy it.

Since then I have read it in bits, a few pages here, a few pages there.
And it always creates in me a dream to travel outise my comfort zone, the seek the adventure.

 

The images are also from last summer in California,
a sailing we did with Steven and Cecilia in their boat.

 

 

 

 

Some Books Travel the World

@brittarnhild

In the spring last year I found a book in an Oxfam store in St.Albans north of London, Jan Morris´Hong Kong. I am a collector of female travel litterature and Jan Morris has for many years been one of my favorite travel writers, so I was not in doubt. The book had to be mine. Knowing that I was going to Hong Kong a few months later, to visit friends, was an extra bonus :-)

 

When my husband and I went to Hong Kong in November last year, the book went with me. I started to read it on the plane and planned to continue during our week there. Our friends Estrid and Sindre had other plans. They were staying in Hong Kong for a year, when we came they had been there a couple of months and already had a long list of must sees to share, and an even longer list of places they wanted to explore themselves and wanted to take us with them.

Our days were filled from early breakfast till late bedtime. And no time at all for reading.

From Hong Kong I continued directly to India while my husband went back home to Norway. I had planned to ask him to take the book, which is a quite heavy hardcover book, with him back home. But then our friends asked to borrow it.

Estrid and Sindre came back to Norway a few months ago, and for two days now they have been in Trondheim. And brought the book with them :-)

So now Morris´Hong Kong is back where it belongs. In my collection of Jan Morris books, in my collection of female travel literature.

And I have picked out, from a pile on my nightstand, Contact! A Book of Glimpses.
A gem of a book which can be read like sucking on candies.

 

 

  

 

 

Here is a link to my blogging from Hong Kong

 

 

A Travel Companion in Istanbul

@brittarnhild

Books on the Menu was born only a month ago, on August 17th. I have always loved books and often write about books in BrittArnhild´s House in the Woods, I have a blog where I note down all the books I read, as soon as I have finished them, as a reading list, but a special blog dedicated to books was not on my mind. Not until that day, the 17th of August, when I sat out on the sunny terrace outside our cabin, looking forward to an upcoming travel to Istanbul, reading Barrie Kerper´s Istanbul: The Collected Traveler. An Inspired Companion Guide.

I had come over the book quite by chance a few months earlier, while browsing the bookstores in Reykjavik, and as I already then knew that I would be going to Istanbul in the fall, it was a must to buy it.

Little did I know then what a wonderful treasure I had stumbled over.

Now, a month later, I know. And I beam.
The book already looks worn, just as a good book is meant to look. Underlinings, post-its,  dog ears, yes, you can easily tell that this is not a book which has been stucked into a book shelf and is forgotten..

And it has lead me to buy more books. Always more books.
Barrie Kerper, who has edited the book, put in small notes here and there, enough to let me know that this must be a Kindered Spirit, and in between she mentions authors and books.

Poor House in the Woods, how many books can it hold?

While reading the book I googled Barrie Kerper, and to my pleasure I found she is a blogger, with a most delightful blog named The Collected Traveler.

Take a look at her blog yourself, but be careful. If you do not intend to buy any more books, the blog cries out DANGER!

I went over there last night, after a couple of weeks away, and now three more books are on the way to The House in the woods from amazon.......

It is Friday night and I know exactly what I will do tonight.
Reading more from The Collected Traveler, both the book and thre blog :-)

 

What about you?

 

 

 

Today´s photos are from a boat ride on Bosphoros

 

 

Colours

@brittarnhild

I dream in colours. For most of my life I have believed that everyone does, until a  friend told me that all her dreams were in black and white. I have always loved colours, loved their purity, loved their mix.

When I was in 4th grade I wanted to knit a pair of socks. This was a real challenge as my classmates were still struggling with potholders. I had learned to knit by my mother and my two grandmothers, and already knew a lot more than knit & purl. In the class room there were baskets filled with yarn, and I picked out a dark blue and an olive green. When I went to the teacher to show her my choice, I couldn´t believe my ears when she told me I could not knit with those two colours. "blue and green do not go together"

I don´t remember which colour my socks ended up in, but I know that from that day on blue and green together are my favorites! Can you imagine anything more beautiful than a deep blue sky and a green river, green fields and green and blue mountains?

In High School I was knitting my father a sweather. Grey, with white and pink stripes. A girl told me - why, you can´t use these colours for your father! Pink is not for men!

My father loved the sweather!

Some time in 2003 I was in Stavanger for a work meeting. In a small Narvesen (kind of 7eleven) a book caught my interest:

Colour. Travel Through the Paintbox
by Victoria Finlay

I picked up the book, started to read, and since then I have been reading it!
Not because it is a slow read, but because I am reading it over and over all the time.

Last spring I met the author, and now my book has a writing in black ink on one of its first pages:
Dear Britt Arnhild.
For someone who loves colours as much as I do!
Victoria Finlay, Bath  

Looks like Victoria knows me. Yes, I love colours. And when I wrote my book about Lent and Lental traditions a few years ago, the rainbow and a colour calendar were important elements.

Victoria´s book is now on Folio,
but for some reason I am not able to find a seller who will skip it to Norway :-(((
How I would love to have the folio edition on my coffee table.

But I do have my paperback from 2003, which I will continue to read on and on.

 

 

From the back cover of the book:

Colour tells the remarkable story of Victoria Finlay´s quest to uncover the many secrets hidden inside the paintbox. On her travels she visited remote Central American villages where women still wear skirts dyed with the purple tears of sea snails; learned how George Washington obsessed about his green dining room while he should have been busy with matters of state, and investigated the mystery of Indian Yellow paint, said to have been made from the urine of Indian cows force-fed with mango leaves.
From mascara to violin varnish, from nomadic carpets to stained glass to pillar boxes to crayons, the story of colour is the story of the efforts of artists and artisans to reproduce the rainbow - and the impact their work has had on the world.

 

 

After Colours Victoria Finlay has written another book; Jewels.
I love this one almost as much as Colours.

 

I met Victoria earlier this summer. She had the most lovely necklace in black and silver. When I commented on it she told me; this is jet.

and since I´ve read Jewels I knew exactly what jet is :-)

 

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today´s pictures are from Tenerife

and you can read about my remarcable meeting with Victoria Finlay here